FORMER national team head coach Frank Hadden has claimed there are too many foreigners in influential posts in the Scottish game.
Hadden, in charge between 2005 and 2009, said those in high positions did not appreciate the traditions of the Scottish game, and feels SRU policies are hampering the development of homegrown players.
Australian Scott Johnson is the current head coach and will become director of rugby when New Zealander Vern Cotter takes over in the summer.
Hadden succeeded an Australian, Matt Williams, and was replaced by Englishman Andy Robinson.
He said: "In my opinion there are far too many foreign people involved at the top end of the game in our country. There is nothing wrong, individually, with a lot of the people there. We have some very fine people involved at the upper end but perhaps not enough who fully appreciate the history and tradition of the game."
Most of Johnson's backroom staff are non-Scots while Edinburgh's South African head coach Alan Solomons has recruited several players from his homeland in recent weeks.
Hadden said: "I don't blame Alan Solomons for going back to what he knows to try and make progress with an Edinburgh side that was really struggling. And he has quite clearly made a difference. But in terms of developing international players, it's not ideal, that's for sure.
"It all stems from a lack of clarity and a strategic plan for our professional teams. Even when I was coaching at Edinburgh and Scotland I was never really all that sure what the aims were."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article